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The future is ours and it's up for grabs...

“A well-crafted, highly imaginative collection of ideas that are inescapably relevant to our era. At times it is terrifying. Other times it is whimsical. But every installment is food for thought.” Orchid’s Lantern.

On National Libraries Day at Primrose Hill Community Library, Stephen read from his debut novel Quantum Confessions, talked about the inspiration behind his work and answered questions on a variety of topics such as anarchy, being an author and the ultimate observer.

As ever, I’m coming at this from a lay-person’s point of view. I have nothing more than an average understanding of the law, so please read on in that spirit.

To prohibit is defined in the dictionary as the act to forbid by authority or law. Prohibition is often used to define a period when alcohol is prohibited, but I’m going to use it as a general term for the legal prohibition of anything.

There are lots of things that are prohibited and the law is there to make sure we obey. Some of these are obvious and talked about semi-openly in public, such as drug prohibition. Some are so built into the fabric of our society that we don’t even recognise them as prohibition. For example, public nudity which is described by the CPS as, “…acting in a way that does not conform to the normal standards of society that require people to be clothed in public…”

Who decides what is true? It’s difficult to know who to trust and traditionally we looked to the educators, the politicians and the clergy, but they’ve become crowd pleasers rather than crowd leaders.

As a layman in relation to theology, philosophy and science, I’ve been thinking about the nature of truth. There are plenty of facts we all agree on, but the hypotheses that emerge from these facts can vary and that’s when it becomes difficult to agree, or even discuss, what is true. It can be hard to believe in something and hold it lightly enough to genuinely welcome the other point of view or even change your mind.